


There is a Crack, a Crack in Everything

by thereweregiants



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Consensual Possession, M/M, Possession, Post-Fall of Overwatch, just little reaper things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 13:13:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21302645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereweregiants/pseuds/thereweregiants
Summary: You'd think that once people died they'd leave you alone.That'd be too straightforward for Jesse McCree.
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Reaper | Gabriel Reyes
Comments: 22
Kudos: 123





	There is a Crack, a Crack in Everything

**Author's Note:**

> apparently I'm on a possession kick ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
it's nicer this time though!
> 
> title from Leonard Cohen's [Anthem](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN7Hn357M6I)  
soundtrack to writing was mostly Firebird 1919 (Jansons/BRSO)

He doesn’t remember when it started.

He does remember the genesis of it all, though.

When there was a before, when there was an after.

He sits in a no-name bar in a no-name town in a South American country he can’t remember the name of either because he’s been sticking to back roads and ducking anyone with the barest hint of authority. 

The way things were, the way they are now.

The bartender switches the TV channel from the football game that the two old men at the bar with Jesse have been watching to the news. 

_ Explosion in Switzerland, _ the headlines blare.

_ Hundreds feared dead, _ the head of the UN Security Council says with an expressionless face.

_ Commanders or instigators? _ the talking heads ask with glee.

Nothing brings in views like a good drama. Especially one with heroes that have tarnished.

Jesse watches blankly, sipping his drink until he’s mouthing at an empty glass. The names of the confirmed dead stream by on a neverending chyron. Some he recognizes, most he doesn’t. He never did associate much with Overwatch at large, and by the end there were barely enough of them left in Blackwatch to bother calling it an organization any longer.

Two names come up over and over again. At first as fallen giants, then as possibly being responsible, then as the goats driven into the woods. No guesses as to who they’re mostly blaming, and it’s not the man with the statue that’s half-shattered in front of a building of collapsed ideals and fragmented stone.

He doesn’t believe it, doesn’t believe most of it. That his former home is now in ashes and flame? Sure. That people he knew and broke bread with are now broken and bleeding themselves? Absolutely. 

But he knew Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes. Knew them in their blood and in their bones, in their convictions and in the pounds of flesh they would be willing to shed for what they believed in. They indeed might destroy each other, at the end of days. Not like this, though. Not with this collateral damage. Not when they hadn’t yet solved the problems of the world.

Jesse had learned about what was done to them, those many decades ago. How they were broken and pulled apart, the pieces examined, then glued back together tighter and firmer. Harder. 

A weld is stronger than the material around it. 

He would touch the lines where skin was pulled together, rub his hands over bones just under the surface that were pieced back into a whole, trace with fingertips and tongue each place that had been rent and then repaired. All while a low voice would share secrets in Jesse’s ear, of how the physical was the least of it all. Of how they would take memories sometimes, when the pain overwhelmed them, when they saw things they shouldn’t. How he didn’t know what else they took. Of what else they gave.

Of how he didn’t know if he was the same person by the end of it, or just a ship of Theseus made of blood and bone and suppressed memories of agony.

Jesse knows the body and brain of Gabriel Reyes as much as he had let anyone do so, and knows that no mere explosion could take someone like him out. Not him, not Jack. People like them don’t die like this. 

His eyes move to the tablet next to him every once in a while. There’s a list, you see. When you’re in the military as deep as they are. Were. You make a list of who you want notified, when death is confirmed. Not when there’s a question, not when they haven’t found the bodies yet. Only when the flesh is cold, only when there are flatlines on the monitors, only when there are enough pieces found that there isn’t enough left over to be a person any more.

Jesse’s been gone for months. He’s shed every bit of his old identity, gotten clean and untraceable electronics, peeled away the last vestiges of Blackwatch like a bandage worn so long it's grown into the skin. He’s been gone and he’s vanished as well as his training can let him, surely Gabriel had updated it in the years since he told Jesse about it, SEP soldiers just don’t die like this, they don’t die ever -

His tablet vibrates, flashing a light that’s the color of alarm, the color of fresh arterial spray, the color of Genji’s eyes and Moira’s hair and a thousand bad memories.

Turns out he’s on the list after all.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“Bourbon, straight.”

The glass when it arrives in front of him is hazy with mysterious residue. Jesse doesn’t particularly care - he’s consumed far worse over the years and the alcohol will probably kill most of it off. 

There’s a creak from the bartop next to him as someone leans on it. Jesse glances over to see a massive man, solid slabs of muscle wrapped up in a biker vest, sitting on a bar stool that can barely hold his weight.

“Hey there, stranger,” he says to Jesse in a rumble like mountains crumbling, flashing a gold tooth in his grin.

Jesse squints at the man’s face, looking it over. He rolls his eyes and turns his attention back to the drink in front of him. “Go the fuck away.”

“That’s no way to respond to a friendly greeting.” 

“I’m really not in the mood.”

The man turns, the stool protesting as he wheels it around so he can rest his elbows back on the bar. “What are you in town for?”

Jesse’s silent, staring into the brown liquid before him like it holds any answers.

“I heard that there were some traffickers coming through. Some drugs, but mostly weapons.” The man lets slow, lascivious eyes work their way down Jesse’s body until they settle on the pistol at his hip. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

A sigh, as Jesse realizes he’s not getting out of the conversation. “Gotta make money somehow.”

An enormous, blocky chin nods at the arm made of steel and softly glowing blue electronics that peeks out from beneath Jesse’s poncho. “That how you lost the arm?”

His hand tightens on his glass, and the resulting screech of steel on crystal makes everyone in a ten foot radius, bar Jesse and the man, wince and put a hand to their ears. “You don’t get to know that,” he says quietly. 

“Why not?”

“You’re dead, Gabe.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t care.”

“It should.” Jesse turns, faces a familiar expression on an unfamiliar face. “Let this poor bastard go. Go away to wherever the fuck you go when you’re not annoyin’ me.”

“He’s no poor anything. You should hear what he was thinking about you.”

“Gabe.”

Shoulders like the front of a truck shrug, and Gabriel downs the last of a beer that looks small in his borrowed fist. “I’m just checking in.”

“There’s nothin’ to check.” Out of his peripheral vision Jesse sees Gabriel get up and stretch. “Gabe.”

A pause.

“Don’t hurt him this time.”

A crooked grin, one that should have scars cutting through and around it. “Why not?”

“Because people see me talkin’ to a guy then see that guy wreck himself too many times, they start thinkin’ it’s my fault.”

“Sounds like a personal issue then, Jesse. I like them not remembering very much that I was there. I’ll see you around.”

Jesse watches as Gabriel leaves, then takes a running start to head straight at a telephone pole. Just before he hits, there’s a stream of black smoke that seeps out of him, but the man at that point is inches away from slamming into solid wood so there’s nothing he can do. The bar shakes faintly at the impact, the stream of smoke vanishes, and Jesse goes back to his drink.

Goddamn ghosts, fucking up his life.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“Jesse? Jesse!”

Someone is saying his name, but he doesn’t recognize the voice. It’s from very far away, so he doesn’t think he should care too much. There’s a sharp pain in his arm and a dull ache in his head and he just doesn’t really want to think right now.

“You need to get up. Get the fuck up, I can’t lift you in this body.”

The tone of voice cuts through - it’s a timbre he’s heard on a hundred battlefields, that says get up or die. He blinks apart eyelids stuck together with blood to see a stranger above him. Narrow face, green eyes, longish hair he shoves behind an ear impatiently. No one Jesse knows.

“Jesse, you know who I am. Come on. It’s me, Gabriel.”

No it’s not. Gabriel has expressive brown eyes that flash with anger or determination or lust, Gabriel has scars that get deep when he smiles but almost no one knows that, Gabriel can carry him out of hell if he wants to because he’s a super soldier and will always, always be at Jesse’s back.

Except not anymore.

Gabriel’s gone.

Jesse lets his eyes close because why the fuck not, there was nothing else for him to -

Crack. A slap to his cheek, hard enough to force his eyelids back open. “Get _ up, _ McCree, I don’t have time for your bullshit!” 

He gets an arm under himself - the metal one, the one that doesn’t tire, that can hold his weight. Between that arm, the wall, and the short thin stranger who keeps prodding him into motion, he’s able to get to his feet. Jesse’s guided down back alleys and through silent streets, every ounce of his energy focused on keeping his feet moving. His eyes don’t want to focus right now, and he has to stop twice to vomit against the wall. 

They end up at a place that looks familiar, stumble up two flights of stairs that seem like they’re going to collapse under Jesse at any moment. That might be the knock to the head, though. The guy with him gets a set of keys out of Jesse’s pocket and gets the door open just in time for Jesse to stagger to the toilet and bring up a stream of thin bile. 

Cool fingers wipe his forehead, use a wetted washcloth to soften the blood crusting his eyelids half-shut. His clothes are peeled off, sweat and blood practically vacuum sealing them onto him. Hands guide him to the bed, push him down, shine a light into his eyes.

“Get that out of my face,” Jesse tries to say, but it comes out as a mumbled slur.

“You’ve got a concussion at the very least, fractured your only remaining wrist, and got the shit kicked out of you by a bunch of idiots you should have had on the floor in seconds because you were drunk.”

“Stop yellin’ at me, Gabe.”

“At least you remember who I am.”

“Nah, you’re just the only one who’d kick me when I was down like this.”

A sigh, and fingers that thread through his hair, crumbling away the blood dried into the strands. “God damnit, Jesse.”

The hands are wrong, the voice is wrong, but something in Jesse relaxes enough to know that if he sleeps, he’ll still be safe. 

“I’m waking you up every hour and you’re not going to like it,” he hears as he starts to drift off. 

“‘Kay. Night, darlin’,” he slurs out. There’s a steady mutter from above him, but he doesn’t bother picking out the words because he knows he’ll be okay.

When he wakes for real some twelve hours later, dreams of being back in his bed in Switzerland with a warm body behind him clinging to his brain like spiderwebs, his wrist and head are neatly bandaged and all his liquor is gone.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“Drink?”

“Whatever you’re havin’.”

“That would be tea.”

“That’s fine.”

Ana raises an eyebrow but fills the kettle and flicks on the stove. “Cutting back on your drinking, mmm?”

Jesse lights a cigar and blows a stream of smoke at her face. She doesn’t blink. “Someone told me it might be a good idea.”

“Oh, who?”

Instead of answering, Jesse just smokes in silence. He doesn’t know how to answer, other than saying _ ‘Your former friend and my ex-everything, who I might just be hallucinatin’ in a drunken daze’ _. He hasn’t seen Gabriel and his weird possession trick since he stopped the booze, at least. When Ana sets a cup of tea next to him, he clears his throat. “You want to let me know why I’m here, other than for refreshments?”

It’s Ana’s turn to not say anything, taking her sweet time adding honey and stirring her tea very thoroughly to make sure it’s dissolved. Finally, she looks up at Jesse, her single eye like a laser. Well, a laser if it was drained of ninety percent of its energy and was sucking at the last dregs of the battery.

“We wanted to give you a warning.”

“We?”

“Jack and I.”

Jesse gives a single nod of acknowledgement. They’ve never talked about it, but Ana knows that Jesse knows who Soldier 76 is. Jack’s always been shit at staying under the radar. 

More silence. “The warning?”

Ana turns the cup around in her hands, long brown fingers that still look capable of snapping a man’s neck without thought dancing along the delicate stoneware. “Gabriel is alive. We - suspected. Each of us, individually. Jack and I had a run in with him a few days ago. Jack is still recovering.”

There’s a sharp sound like a gunshot, and Jesse carefully sets the dripping pieces of porcelain down onto the saucer. Ana silently takes it from him and gets up, returning a minute later with a fresh cup that steams and smells like mint. 

“What - what was he like?” Jesse asks carefully.

“Black coat. Mask. Shotguns. Completely covered up, but you’d know him if you saw him move.”

Mask and black coat? “What, like Reaper?”

A clink as Ana sets down her cup. “He _ is _ Reaper.”

Jesse jerks his head up, staring at her. “And he was - solid. Corporeal.”

Ana frowns, and he can see the skin under her eyepatch pulling. “Now why would you ask that, Jesse?”

He looks at her steadily. Waits.

“He would turn into black smoke, mist. Could go up walls, vanish into thin air. Why?”

If it was anyone else, he’d laugh it off and walk away, leave. If it was Jack he still might do that because he has too much anger in him, even now. This is Ana, though. Captain Amari, who never let her skepticism of the capabilities of a gang leader stop her from helping turn him into the best soldier, the best person he could be.

“I think. I think I’ve been talking to him.”

“You think?”

“It might have been a - side effect of alcohol. Hadn’t talked to him since I stopped so.” He hesitantly tells her about how sometimes a person will come up to him. Smile the way Gabriel smiled, talk the way he talked. A few times, when Jesse’s let him get close enough, touch him the way he touched. And then he’ll leave in a wisp of black smoke, almost always knocking the person out first.

Jesse tried following the smoke, but it vanished before he could even get out of the door. He also stayed with the people a few times, checking to see if they remembered anything. They never did. 

“Well.” Ana scratches a thumbnail around the chipped edge of her cup. “It’s not something that I’ve heard of Reaper doing before, but.” She looks Jesse in the face. “Well.” 

But it’s Jesse. 

Jesse, who Gabriel shaped to his own right hand, who Gabriel became dependent on, who Gabriel made the mistake of teaching to think for himself. 

The fight they had before Jesse left was noticeable mostly because of how quiet it was. Gabriel knew that everything was falling apart, was torn by his need to have Jesse with him and his desire to know Jesse was as far away from the coming storm as possible. A push and pull of greed and protectiveness, of selfishness and selflessness, of love and love.

When Jesse got dressed the next morning, packing up the last of his things, Gabriel lay in bed watching him without a sound. Jesse hadn’t known that someone’s silence could be so painful, would have preferred yelling and insults. Instead he got a single kiss with an entire wordless conversation fitting in the space between their lips. Dogtags looped around his neck. A hand brushing over his hat that he was fairly sure placed a tracker. After he closed the door to his quarters behind him and leaned against it for a long moment, the sound of a tablet shattering against a wall.

“Did you see him?” he finds himself asking. “What did he look like?”

It’s Ana’s turn to tighten her fingers on her cup. To look away and close her eye. “I hope for your sake he keeps appearing in other people’s bodies,” is all she says.

They drink their tea in silence, thinking their own thoughts.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“Tell me somethin’ only you would know. That I don’t know.”

“Like what?”

Jesse shrugs. “Still dunno if you’re a hallucination or not.”

The man in front of him - stocky, a full beard, built like a wrestler - tilts his head. “I thought you stopped drinking.”

“Mostly.” Jesse takes a sip from his beer. Beer doesn’t count, not for the levels he needs to silence the memories in his head. He waits.

A sigh, the sound of fingernails ticking against the side of a rocks glass. When Jesse had come in, the man - just the man, then - had hit on Jesse, drinking a beer. After coming back from a smoke outside, the man ordered Gabriel’s usual scotch and looked at Jesse like he knew what was under his clothing.

“I saw Ana a while back. Jack too.” 

Jesse picks at a bit of label with his metal thumb. “I said somethin’ I don’t know.”

“Huh. Really, now. Did they tell you I shot Jack in the back? Would’ve killed him, if Ana didn’t stick her nose in.”

Turning in his seat, Jesse looks at Gabriel straight in the face for the first time that night. “If we’re goin’ for things I don’t know, then how about that? What happened between you two at the end there? Why do you wanna kill him now?”

Jesse and Gabriel had one type of bond, but Jack and Gabriel had another. Jesse had learned not to get jealous over it - it wasn’t romantic, wasn’t sexual. It was something else, though. Something terrifyingly deep, where they could hold conversations with single glances that Jesse couldn’t hope to begin to interpret. It’s haunted him, these past years. What happened to them and why.

Gabriel lets grey eyes bore into Jesse’s, moves them up and down his body. “We could be doing so much more interesting things than talk about the past. Why don’t you show me what hovel you’re staying in this week?”

Jesse rolls his eyes. Only Gabriel would consider that a come on. “I’m not touchin’ whatever asshole you roped into this shit this week.” 

“You really should. He had to go piss, I can guarantee you a very nice cock.”

“I’m not sleepin’ with someone who you’re puppetin’ around, Gabe. He doesn’t want this.”

A smile, sharp as a razor and twice as deadly. “Oh, but he does. You should have heard the things he was thinking about you before I got in here. He’d enjoy himself, trust me. Underestimated a few measurements and still wanted you.”

“Fine.” Before Gabriel can do more than draw borrowed breath, Jesse continues. “I’ll fuck you if you tell me what happened. Back then.”

Gabriel looks at Jesse, then looks away. Wraps stubby fingers around his glass, unwraps them, touches a finger to a circle of moisture left on the bartop. 

“Jack never quite recovered after Ana left. It wasn’t just losing her, it was losing the buffer she provided. Against Petras, against the UN. Against me. He didn’t...didn’t have anyone he could go to. You know how we were by that point.” 

Jesse nods, silently. 

“After Ana was gone, after you left, after Genji left Overwatch...Jack had no one to blame the dirty work on. All the leaks, all the shit that he liked to say Blackwatch was at fault for, well it was obvious that it was due to issues in his own organization. Petras was coming down hard on him, but it wasn’t an excuse. Said if I wasn’t there, if we,” Gabriel motions to Jesse and himself and the invisible Blackwatch at large, “Weren’t there, none of it would have happened. Like we weren’t cleaning the shit up off of his shoes for decades,” he says bitterly. 

“The explosion wasn’t either of us. Probably whoever was fucking with us, trying to clean up the last bits.” He goes quiet after that. Jesse waits for more, because this is all good to hear but doesn’t explain who Gabriel would try and kill his oldest friend.

Gabriel looks up. “That’s what happened.” He drains the last of his drink, sets the glass on the bartop. Slides off his stool and slides a hand along Jesse’s lower back like it has a right to be there. “Now, then.”

Jesse tosses down a few bills to cover their drinks and gets up himself, shaking Gabriel’s hand off. “I said I’d fuck you, not whoever you’re wearin’.”

Eyebrows draw down. The cheerful face of the man’s body isn’t built for the glare Gabriel is trying to achieve. “You said -”

“I said I’d fuck _ you. _ Ana said you had a body, that you were Reaper. You ready to be that for me? Because I’m not messin’ with someone who’s not part of this.”

“He -”

“Gabe.” There’s enough pain in the word to make Gabriel lose the smirk. Jesse’s too tired, too emotionally drained by life to play the games that Gabriel has been setting up. He shakes his head at Gabriel’s silence. “Yeah. Didn’t think so.” 

Gabriel’s been using these fuckers as shields, as barriers between whoever, whatever the fuck he is now and Jesse. They can talk all they want, but that’s where Jesse ends it. 

He walks out of the bar, not bothering to see Gabriel leave. 

He knows how it’ll end. Violence and smoke. Seems like he doesn’t know anything else these days.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse is stretched out on his back in the lumpy bed, eyes half closed in the late afternoon sun that lays over him like a golden blanket. In addition to a tidy sum gained from taking out a local gang terrorizing the neighborhood, the thankful bodega owner offered him a bed in the small motel she ran on the second floor. He mostly accepted because of the free homemade food she said she’d throw in as well. Beds you can find anywhere, but real, gramma-made grub? That’s something to take advantage of.

He hasn’t moved since he woke that morning. Dozed off and on, played a vid on his tablet for a bit. Nothing that required him to move, other than getting up once for a piss. He’s not hungry, something that’s been happening more since he stopped drinking. He’d be happier about the saved money, if his clothes weren’t fitting a bit looser, if he wasn’t worried about the missing muscle mass. 

Jesse doesn’t know what it would cost to get his prosthetic arm resized to something smaller, and doesn’t particularly want to find out. It was expensive enough the first time.

Turning over, he pushes the covers down with his legs. Lets the sun coat him, light the ends of his body hair with tiny, fiery sparks. He’s wearing nothing but a pair of ratty underwear with seams fraying at the legs and waist, so it feels like he’s dipping into a warm bath.

He frowns as the room goes dark and cold for a moment. Opens his eyes to see a ribbon of familiar black smoke twisting on the air. Jesse watches it twine around the rafters of the ceiling for a moment, until it swoops down closer to him. A thread teases out, getting closer. Hesitant, almost. Jesse doesn’t move, just watches it. It strokes the side of his face - a nearly weightless touch tracing along his cheekbone - before pulling back to where he can’t see it any more and -

_ Jesse. _

“Gabe?”

A warm feeling moving through his limbs. Like contentment, like peace, like his own body giving himself a hug from the inside. 

“This is...new.”

_ Didn’t know if it would work. I can only get into a few people in the first place. _

“Really?”

_ They have to let me in. Not consciously, but something in them has to be willing. I don’t know that much about it, just know it works. _

“And I’m willin’, apparently.”

Jesse can feel the smirk inside of him._ Like you’d ever say no to me. _ It sounds arrogant, sounds proprietary. It’s not, even as much as it’s true.

He rolls his eyes, but can’t help the smile playing at the edges of his own lips. “So why are you here? And not in someone else like you usually are?”

_ Because you made me a deal and I’d like you to pay up. _ There’s that warmth again running through his limbs, except it spreads, goes from his marrow out to his fingernails. When the feeling finally fades and Jesse tries to move his hand to scratch at his hand, it doesn’t move.

_ Gabe… _ His voice is in his own head, his vocal chords are still.

“Huh.” Jesse’s hand raises up, his eyes move to look over it as his fingers flex. “I guess this works. You okay?”

Jesse would be hyperventilating, except he has no lungs to breathe from, no heart to speed up. He fuzzes out for a minute, comes to with a hand rubbing a familiar rhythm on his chest, of a voice murmuring comforting words. “You okay?” Gabriel repeats.

_ I think so. Just. Weird. _

“This is kind of new territory for me too,” Gabriel says. He sits up in bed, swings Jesse’s legs out to rest on the floor. He gets up, takes a single step, and promptly trips. “What the fuck?” Gabriel gets his balance, but not without a decent amount of flailing and swearing. “Why am I so off balance?”

_ The arm isn’t on. _

“The arm isn’t….fucking Christ,” Gabriel says, as he looks down and sees the scarred stump. The arm is in a corner, plugged in and charging. Given Jesse doesn’t have to pay for the room, he’s taking advantage of the free electricity. 

_ Let me try somethin’. _ Jesse thinks of the days, the weeks he spent getting used to the arm. Dozens of memories of learning how to balance suddenly missing ten pounds from one side of his body, and then getting acclimated to the heavier prosthetic. He pushes the memories in the general direction of where he feels Gabriel, and can feel his surprise. 

“That was unexpected. Helpful, though.” When Gabriel gets up this time, it’s with far more ease and fluidity. He walks around the room, and Jesse can feel him moving his limbs around, testing everything out. 

“You’ve lost weight.”

_ Eh. Happens. _

They’re in the bathroom now, Gabriel staring at Jesse’s face in the mirror. He touches the bags under his eyes, the crows feet at the corner of his eyes, the threads of grey in his beard. “When did you get old?”

_ Fuck off. Like you didn’t look worse than me. _

Gabriel grins with Jesse’s face, and it’s strange as hell to see his smile tug at Jesse’s lips. It settles back down into a smirk, one that makes something warm in Jesse’s chest. “Now, then. I think I had something to do.”

He walks them back out into the bedroom, more and more comfortable in Jesse’s skin. Sits on the bed facing the dresser - the dresser with the enormous mirror sitting on top of its low drawers, It’s tarnished a bit with age, but is certainly clear enough to show Jesse down to his knees, to show Gabriel moving Jesse’s hand over a hairy thigh. Each time getting closer to the sensitive inner skin, where it’s softer, more vulnerable.

_ You’re really gonna do this, huh. _

“It’s been years since I’ve had my hands on you,” Gabriel says with a contented sigh as he rubs his hand lazily over Jesse’s pec, thumbing at his nipple along the way. “Why wouldn’t I try this out now?”

For a while it’s just silent touching, Gabriel moving Jesse’s hand - hand, singular, and don’t think that Gabriel isn’t obvious about his frustration with that - over his body here and there. It’s...odd for Jesse. He’s aroused, can’t help it with Gabriel in him in the most literal of ways, of seeing him move his body around for his own pleasure. But his arousal is separate from Gabriel’s. It’s Gabriel’s mind in Jesse’s body, and they always did respond differently to things. He can’t get Jesse off the way he would get himself off, and Jesse can feel his annoyance at it. 

_ Wait for a sec, _ Jesse thinks, and spends a moment gathering memories. The first time they slept together - high on adrenaline and stuck in a safehouse a hundred miles from anywhere, both experienced but not with each other. The last time they were together - quiet, melancholy, thoughtless in how they had a decade’s worth of knowledge of each other in their hands and mouths. Times in between where they learned each other, sometimes smooth, sometimes awkward, with moans and laughter and everything in between. All from Jesse’s point of view.

Gabriel stiffens, staring into thin air as the sense memories wash through him. He collapses after a moment, bracing himself with an unsteady hand on his leg. After a few deep breaths, he says, “That’s what it was like for you, huh.”

_ Yeah. _

Wincing, Gabriel presses a hand to Jesse’s now painfully hard cock. “Christ. That actually hurts.”

_ It’s been a while. _

He jacks off sometimes, when he’s bored or lonely or wakes from rapidly fading dreams of large hands and a sharp smile and knowing that he’s safe. No other people, though. He just doesn’t have the desire any more, and doesn’t like to think about why that might be so.

Gabriel doesn’t comment on it, is probably able to feel or hear some of what Jesse is thinking. Instead he pulls Jesse’s underwear down and off, hissing as his cock comes up to slap against his stomach.

What follows is - strange, to say the least. Jesse is a spectator, looking at what Gabriel looks at, feeling what he feels. He watches as Gabriel moves Jesse’s eyes over his own body in the mirror. Sees how they stay for a long time on the lines of Jesse’s neck and the jut of his collarbone, how he plays with Jesse’s nipples for far longer than he’d expect. Gabriel figures out how to lean back and brace himself on the stump of Jesse’s arm so he can touch with the other. Long, long minutes are spent running Jesse’s fingers over the curves of muscle leading over his hips, of moving from tougher skin that’s exposed to the elements to softer, lighter skin that’s more sensitive and protected.

You think you know what someone likes about you, after enough years. What they’re into. That’s completely different from experiencing it from the inside, seeing exactly what Gabriel’s eyes linger on, what he spends extra time examining. 

They both gasp, inside and out, when Gabriel finally wraps Jesse’s hand around his cock. He feels oversensitized from the memories and the situation, from being touched for so long, from being completely in the control of someone he - trusted and loved, at one point at least. From being with another person, any other person, after years alone.

This, Gabriel knows. How to make Jesse break in ten seconds or ten minutes or stretch it out until he’s sobbing for relief. Even easier, now that he’s feeling it himself. Long, tight strokes with a thumb swiping over the head every once in a while, just what Jesse likes. Gabriel’s eyes linger on Jesse’s balls, how they tighten up every time a lightning zing of nerves being hit just the right way goes through them. Of the dark, blood-rich head of his cock popping in and out of his hand, of the pulses of precome that make everything easier, slicker. 

Jesse starts murmuring in Gabriel’s mental ear, _ saying remember that time in Croatia, remember that time in Barcelona, remember that year when everyone was gone for the holidays and we fucked on every surface in HQ. Remember that time Null Sector kidnapped me and you left me tied up and fucked me surrounded by blood and sparks and the evidence of what happens when someone takes something that’s yours because I’m yours I’m still yours _

Gabriel’s not looking at anything anymore, back arched off the bed as his hand works over himself, over Jesse. The sounds coming from his throat aren’t quite his, aren’t quite Jesse’s, are some strange combination of the two. _ Come on, _ Jesse whispers. _ It’s been as long for you as it has been for me, come on you bastard I want to see you come in my body. _

When his head snaps back and every muscle tightens, Gabriel tries to muffle the sound, to cover his mouth with his hand. He can’t though - Jesse’s only hand is clenched tight around his twitching cock, starting to pulse streaks of sticky white over his tense stomach. The noise that comes from Jesse’s borrowed throat is surprisingly soft and vulnerable, the sound of a man - of two men - who have been on the run from life and each other for far too long.

Jesse himself doesn’t come, not exactly. He gets all the feedback from Gabriel though, feels how he reacts to it all. It’s enough. He’s fairly sure he’d give his other arm to have Gabriel with him in person, to tuck his face under his scratchy, stubbled jaw and taste his skin again. To feel what it was like again to be held, to be secure in who he is and where he is. 

It’s a long comedown, as breath slows and skin cools. Gabriel’s silent, enough that Jesse wonders if he’s gone or hibernating or god knows what. Jesse still can’t move his limbs, so he eventually says, _ Gabe? _

A deep breath in, bringing the scents of sweat and sex. “Yeah. I’m here. That was...a lot.”

_ Mmm. _

Quiet again, but now in a more familiar, post-coital way. Jesse takes a mental breath, knowing he’s about to ruin it.

_ I missed that. Miss you. _

Silence from Gabriel, but he’s opened his eyes and is staring at the ceiling. Jesse can tell he’s not really looking at anything, though. 

_ You have a body, I know you do. Ana told me about it. Come and find me, we could be together. _

A painful bark of laughter, and Jesse’s quietly shocked to feel his throat thickening a bit. “You don’t want that, Jesse. You don’t know what I am now, what I’ve become. What I’ve done.”

_ It doesn’t matter. _

“It does. I’m not - him any more. I’m not Gabriel Reyes. I’m not the man you - I’m not him.” He sounds tired, so tired. Jesse gets the sudden, strange feeling that this was meant to be a final goodbye.

Jesse knows a little about Reaper. Knows he’s in Talon, knows he broke Doomfist out. Knows he’s killed former Overwatch members. A lot of them. There’s something in Jesse that was broken when he was seventeen and put back together by scarred hands with shotgun calluses. Part of him knows that Gabriel could kill Jesse himself and he would still love him even as the light went out of his eyes.

_ You’ve been among those people too long, darlin’. Just - come back to me. Please. _ He doesn’t say _ while you still remember this _ . Doesn’t say _ before you forget the last of your humanity. _ Doesn’t say _ before it’s too late, _ but they both hear it around the edges of his mental voice.

Gabriel lifts a hand still tacky with semen and lightly kisses the fingertips, before there’s a gust of wind and smoke vanishing out of an open window. Jesse lies on his back, alone, body sore in a pleasant sort of way. 

He licks lips that taste of salt and promises, and gets up to shower.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Months go by. 

Jesse sees Ana twice, Jack once. It’s awkward. None of them are the same, anymore. It’s more than losing the organization, the uniform. It’s losing their heart, their motivation and purpose. Now they’re driven by baser instincts. Revenge. Anger. Spite. 

It’s a Saturday in the hills outside of Amsterdam. Sombra hired Jesse to go to a facility, some lab Talon set up for one of their pet projects, and place cameras and some drones waiting to be activated. Easy enough - a quick bike ride through the cool spring air, and there’s a prepaid hotel suite and a city full of coffeeshops that don’t serve coffee waiting for him at the end of it. 

He pauses, heading back to his hovercycle. Instincts honed for decades say there’s someone here, but it’s silent other than the sounds of wind and insects. He shrugs, gets on the bike. Sombra has him kitted out with more anti-observation tech than he knows what to do with, if anyone is trying to get his picture it’s going to go badly for him. 

Back in the city he parks the bike, heads up the hotel stairs with a friendly nod at the concierge. Everything is fine until he gets to the room. He opens the door and stops - it’s that same feeling of not being alone. 

Hand on his holstered gun, he pads silently through the suite. Through the open door to the bedroom he sees a dark, cloaked figure looking at his duffel bag on the bed. Jesse’s breath caches in his throat, and there’s a soft click as he lets the safety of his gun go back on. The figure turns, and a bone pale mask looks at him for a long moment.

He takes a step forward, then another. Another and another until there are shotguns hitting the floor on either side of him and he has his arms wrapped around a body both familiar and not. 

The bone structure isn’t quite the same, the musculature either. He doesn’t smell of citrus cologne and leather oil and the salt sweat of hard work anymore. But the arms around Jesse are as tight as ever, the fingers gripping his shoulder and side hard but carefully so he’s not punctured by claws.

Some things go beyond years, beyond death, beyond bodies in whatever form they take. Jesse clings to the man who was once everything to him, and knows he’ll follow him wherever he leads. 

**Author's Note:**

> hi come yell with me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/thereweregiants)


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